Endless Flight
by PallaPlease
Summary: [Post-OotP, Tonks/Lupin]  As the Death Eaters begin to rise, Tonks and Lupin wind up in a great deal of trouble - and that which seems simple soon becomes frightening.  [Prologue up.]


**Endless Flight**

by** PallaPlease**

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**Prologue:** To Begin at the End

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      The rain, falling in a relentless flux of cold needles, filled her mouth and poured down her face with the tears both frustrated and deeply frightened; Tonks spat her mouthful of rainwater out quickly, screaming his name again though her throat pulsed hoarsely, and squinting uselessly to see through the rain, stumbled in the sludge the soil was fast becoming.  Her bedraggled green hair clung stubbornly to her scalp, wet bangs sticking over her eyes and gluing to her mouth as the wind tossed the thick droplets in a new direction, irritating her already splintered nerves and heightening her anxiety.  

        She stopped frenetically jogging, stilled her neck as she craned about desperately trying to spot him, and screwed her face up almost angrily: a dull spurt of old, recognized pain was easily ignored and her hair vanished, leaving her head fully exposed to the rain.  Grimacing, she acknowledged the exchange of mild insulation for only a slight increase in visibility, and forced her feet forward through the mud.

        "Lupin!" yelled Tonks.  Her foot slid through the mud, sprinkling thick brown beads on the oozing slash along her calf; she wished, briefly, for her wand, but as the rain intensified and she again slipped in the mud, she knew the odds of finding her wand in these conditions was unlikely.  "Lupin, please!  It's not as though I can see right through the bloody storm, you know!"  Part of her mind reflected snidely on the variety of spells she could be using – a locating spell, a spell to see clearer, anything to close up her leg – had she not lost her wand, and she jerked her foot with a sucking sound from the engulfing slime.  "Lupin!"

        Moody was going to kill her: not only had they been ambushed and separated by those cursed Death Eaters, but she had lost her wand and was wandering aimlessly in a gradually bogging plain in search of a lycanthropic wizard who may or may not have fallen under the nearly full moon; it might not trigger a true transformation, but she knew he grew more irritable, almost hostile at times in the day before the full moon.  Goosebumps arched on her skin, and rubbing her arms, she darkly thought perhaps this was the one fine thing the cloud cover and its blinding rain could offer.  

        As she shook her fingers to smooth the goosebumps and dissuade the unnerving numbness settling in, she paused fanciful imaginings of werewolves and Lupin to think, quickly, on one of the more sensitive senses he had spoken of when she first met the man; eyes and ears, of course, but it was smell, he had said quietly in that gently rasping voice of his, smell that was really everything, delicate and keen enough to pick out the copper tang of blood.

        A wave of gratitude swept over Tonks and in that sense of elation she stopped slogging about, beaming into the rain.  "God bless you, Lupin!" she bellowed hopefully.  He might be able to hear her, she thought.  "You and that ruddy wolfish nose of yours: to heaven with the both of you, and if this works I'll be peckin' to kiss you!"  

        She scrunched her face up again, pained, and after a few seconds the lower half of her face began to distort, nose more significantly than the rest – small tufts of dark fur patched out around her mouth – her nose grew broader and smoother in its angles, wet not just from the rain.  It took a moment more before she was satisfied with the change, from her snub human nose to a wide wolf's, and she grinned nastily as she wondered what a Death Eater would think to see her lurching, wolf-faced, through the rain.

        Lupin, she reminded herself.  Careful of her slowly bleeding leg's position, she dug in the soaked cloth of her windbreaker (and bless the Muggles, too!) for one of the patches she had hastily shoved there when they fled the inn.  Tonks peeled one of the heavy scraps of frayed cloth away from the others, praying worriedly that wetness had not totally destroyed his scent.  It was a grim hope, that his scent – whatever it was, as she hurried to shove the other patches back in the pocket – remained on the scraps, much less the ground with as hard as the rain was coming.  With the urgency deserving of the situation, she nearly forced the fabric up her newly attained snout before the vestiges of scent caught her attention:

        His smell was as all the scents of others were, indescribable but – in the manner of those known well – familiar.  She printed it on her mind eagerly, and crouching fell into a rushed lope, her fingers pointing to the ground should she fall.  Much as Tonks had feared the rain was forcing away all other scents but its own malignant beauty, and as several minutes of disoriented running proved irritatingly result-less, she grew despondent.  The child in her was frightened, and wanted very badly to just Apparate back to the inn and hope he would follow; the Auror within Tonks was infuriated, listing an exact file of mistakes and idiot's gambles she had, in foolish whimsy, bullied Lupin into; the woman grew cold to think he was dead; and a voice of reason and thought told her to stick her damn nose closer to the mud.

        Again frustrated to tears, she did so angrily and was caught off-guard by the gentle – if subtly edged – smell of Lupin tracing weakly through a slough of mud to her left.  "Lupin!" she heard herself shout, relief and surging anxiety granting speed to her legs, "if you so much as move one silly hair, I'll tell Mad-Eye, and ooo! will you get it!"  It was reasonable the greatest threat to keep him still that she could think of; heaven knew she was not afraid of dear old grumpy Moody, and she did not personally relish the thought of his being angry at her.

        "If you can hear me," for the briefest of seconds she lost the scent, only to find it happily a foot before her, "I'm coming to find you, right quickly; so if you might be kind enough not to move, that'd be terrific."  As the last word left her mouth, muffled slightly by the fur fringing her lips – she would simply waste time ridding herself of it – she noticed with some surprise that the rain had been slowing a bit for the past few minutes.  It had apparently been a vicious shower, and she felt very uneasy at the thought of the clouds beginning to dissipate – leaving Lupin in moonlight near the apex of the cycle (full moon, she thought, tonight or tomorrow night; a dangerous time for he and she to be abroad); Lupin who had not been given his Wolfsbane Potion and who was probably already peaked from the frantic skirmish in the night.  She thinned her lips, determined.  Hell if she would leave her partner alone, at the mercies of his disease!  She took a step left, muzzle wrinkling thoughtfully.

        "Tonks," said Lupin from her frontal right, weary and rasping, "where are you aiming to go?"  It was unusually blunt and she started with a shriek.  "Didn't mean to startle you; my apologies," he spoke sincerely, and characteristically quiet; a small globe of weak light appeared before his unseen figure once he murmured, "_Lumos_," and leaned into the globe, more so he could see her than she him.

        "Bloody hell," replied Tonks, impressed in spite of herself by the narrow gash along his brow.  "Had a close chat with the nasty end of a sharp spell, did you?  Or a sword, was it?"  Hurriedly, she peeled her jacket off, leaving her newly exposed arms clammy, and wadded it up to press it clumsily to his head.  

        He was horribly disheveled, perpetually graying brown hair muddy and sticking up in patches, with the sleepless pouches under his eyes darker in the vain light.  "You look like hell," she smiled, squatting and carefully looping an arm behind him to feel for what was supporting his back; a particularly lumpy boulder, she surmised, with his threadworm and oft patched coat padded over it.

        "What have you done to your face?" asked Lupin mildly in reply, closing his eyes.  "Ah, it was Punch, I think.  The rain made it a bit tricky trying to s-ah!"  The skin tightened around his cheeks, faint lines fading as she shoved her palm apologetically hard to her jacket, staunching the flow of watery blood down the side of his face.  After a moment he continued, his voice distant, almost sleepy.  "She – I do know it was a woman, at least – gouged me from behind, very nearly managed to blind me.  Had to, ah, run, as the moon was still out."  His eyes flickered up to the heavy clouds, wary though the rain still pounded angrily about; the light on the end of his wand dimmed ominously, plunging his face briefly into shadow to create a mask of exhaustion in place of foreboding.

        It reminded her shortly of Punch falling, hysterical and raging, through the misting rain beginning to shiver down; her wand had been oddly colored when she dug it along the overwhelmed Tonks' calf, and the young Auror wondered fleetingly if her having werewolf blood was now a possibility.  Wands, however, were of interest and Tonks asked, dubiously, "Why didn't you just pop off a spell at her?"  

        Lupin looked oddly childish in the half-light, as though the lines on his face were resolutely gone; Tonks supposed this meant she now resembled a babe in an exceptionally soaked nappy.

        "Couldn't," said Lupin quietly.  He shifted, carefully gathering his coat off the rack, and out of the weak wand light his face lapsed back into lined weariness.  'I faintly heard one of them – a younger one, and none too bright – jinx the field; most spells won't work for another hour or so."  As she stuck her tongue out at him, trying to keep her jacket pinned to the gash on his forehead, he wedged his flickering wand in the mud and cautiously tugged his wet coat on, taking care not to jog the arm holding her jacket to his scrape.  

        "Didn't you try to use your wand, Tonks?" he asked gently; from any other it might have been cruel or unpleasantly critical, but Lupin – she had found – was wonderfully understanding around her, if not half as fun to tease as Moody (who, considering she suddenly recalled was supposed to meet them with Kingsley at the inn, was still going to kill her).

        She turned red; thankfully the rain hid her sheepish blush.  "I, uh, tripped," she explained, "and my wand fell in the mud.  I haven't a whit where the hell it went."

        "Oh," nodded Lupin, dryly adding, "of course."  Before she could do more than take back her charitable thoughts (and warm to the idea of jabbing her palm harder on the gash), he had plucked his wand out of the mud, cleaned and pointed it randomly, and the light still dimly flickering, muttered, "_Accio__ wand_."

        For a moment, she thought even this most basic of spells had failed, and then:

        "Ow!"  Tonks jumped and rubbed at the back her head from her new sprawled position in the mud, her tentative crouch failing her.  The rain continued to pound helpfully on her and Lupin.  Her wand rested innocently in the mud where, having struck the back of her head with alarming force, it had fallen quickly and effortlessly, and she picked it up as she glared uselessly toward the mud.  "Thanks," she said grumpily to Lupin; he smiled wanly.  "Do you happen to know if healing spells are all good with it?"  She gestured with a grin at her bloodied, but thankfully shallow, wound.  "Punch came for me after she got herself a chunk of your scalp," she grinned cutely.  "I might've broken her nose when she tried to rid the world of a Tonks."

        Lupin smiled faintly, and as she wondered, momentarily, on fearful thoughts (what if the wound was deeper than she thought, what if the jinx didn't keep Punch from hexing him with her wand, werewolf blood on her hands, on his face, in her blood), he struggled slowly, rather carefully, up to his feet.  His naturally pale face went even paler, and she realized a goodly amount of blood was pooled where he had been sitting; the place of origin, she thought, was certainly not his head. 

        "Tonks," he said, very distantly, "dear, dear Tonks, could we," he swallowed thickly and she quickly looped an arm around his back.  "I think we ought to try – to Apparate back to the Thimble Crown.  I've – banged my leg up a bit, running, and we – ah."

        "Right-o!" she said with false cheer, swinging her wand into the waistline of her jeans.  "Let's try it together, all right?"  He nodded and she closed her eyes, feeling whimsical in the rain.

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        When she opened them again, they were there, both in his room and staring straight into a particularly grouchy-looking Moody's face.  "Hullo, Mad-Eye," she tried for cheeriness and sat down woozily on the edge of Lupin's small, nested bed.  "Have you been waiting terribly long, then?  Would've left a note, but--"

        She snapped her mouth shut, quietly helping Lupin sit down as Kingsley wearily pulled his own wand out and stepped forward; Moody glowered, his magical eye swirling agitatedly about in the socket, and he growled, "What the hell were you two off doing?"

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Notes:  _This is where you demand to know what the hell this was all about.  ^^  But really, the prologue's title was quite fitting, I think, and if anyone is reading, feel free to start guessing and/or ranting.  I already know where I'm taking this, and I expect I'll have the first chapter written while I'm plane-bound for the States.  Do review, and many thanks!_

Disclaimer_: Don't own 'em.  Enough said._


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